APF caricatures

I did a bunch of caricatures over the weekend, at the Alabama Phoenix Festival. I drew them smaller than usual, and with more colors, and with some effort, as always, to continue to get cartoonier. What do you think of these?

This kid's name is Darby.

For some reason, on this one, I reverted to my drawn-big-and-monochromatic style.

 This is my cartoonist friend Chris Fason.

This is my cartoonist friend Tim Rocks. He gave me license to try and be as grotesque as possible. I'm sure I could have pushed it further, though. I'm still trying to improve. 

This is my cartoonist friend Tom Briscoe. I did a very bland version first, then later in the day tried again in an attempt to be cruel. Probably somewhere in between would have been good. 

Trying to be a little more creative with color here, but I've got a lot to learn in that department.

This is the beautiful baby of my cartoonist friend Kinch Raby, II. 

This fellow only had a dollar, so I said I'd do a little bitty version for that. I like it. Maybe I should make them all little bitty.

The Alabama Phoenix Festival

It's here!  Birmingham sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, & arts convention The Alabama Phoenix Festival is starting now and continues throughout the weekend.  Click that link for all the info.

A bunch of Salty 'Ham Cartooneestas will be there: Tom Briscoe, Chris Fason, Andy Gray, James Hislope, Kinch Raby, and me, Chris Garrison.  As well as a bunch of other artists who probably SHOULD be SHC's, but just haven't joined yet.

I'll be selling Jakey the Jerk #1, which collects all the Jakey stories so far from my webcomic Zoo Laffs, and I reckon I'll also do a few caricatures.  See you there!

More Party Caricatures

I've been doing more party caricatures!  It's a lot of fun.  What do you think of these?

Never put red around the eyes.  It's demonic.

She wasn't squinting when I drew her!

Loved these guys.

I'm still feeling like my caricature style is just okay.  I think if I would just study what some of my favorite caricaturists are doing, and employ some weird theories I've been hatching about the art form, and really practice to figure some things out, I might make a stylistic breakthrough.  I just need to take the time to do that stuff.

Kablooey Extras

Over at Zoo Laffs (my weekly webcomic on DummComics.com), I just finished up a 10-part story.  It's called Kablooey!!!, and it stars Jakey the Jerk and Sassafras Vallee.  (If you'd like to read it from the beginning, start HERE.)

It seems like it went over pretty well with the readers, so I thought maybe a few people would enjoy some behind the scenes stuff.  So now, here are a few of the DVD Special Features.


These, I think, are the first drawings of Jakey ever. (click any of these images to enlarge) --

For some reason, I did my writing for Kablooey in longhand.  Here's a typical page of the script (although most pages didn't have any sketches on them).  Note the numbers, where I'm trying to work out what to put in which panel.

Here's a look at the design process for our heroine.  It took me three pages of my sketchbook before I felt like I'd hit upon a pretty good Sassafras.  Here are all three pages.  Maybe you like one of the earlier versions better, eh?

I like to plan out the pages before I start the actual drawing, to work out the panel layouts and acting beats.  Here's my rough idea for the beginning of part 9:

Then I pencil it for rilz:

For this story, I inked it on my light table, instead of doing it digitally.  Here's how that page turned out:

Hopefully, I'll get to come back to Jakey and Sassafras before too long.  Although I do have a few other things I want to do first.

Christmas Caricatures

I've had a couple caricature gigs at Christmas parties lately. Instead of doing them with a black marker plus one grey tone, I decided to try it with black plus one color.  Takes the same amount of time, but adds a bit of cheer.  Check 'em out!

These pics are kinda blurry, because I took them on my phone. But I think you can see them okay.  (Click to enlarge.)

Awesome Birmingham restaurant Rojo had a great party, and here are some of the drawings I did there:

I think they came out pretty cute.  Folks definitely enjoyed them, so it was a lot of fun.  I still have theories about how I could get cartoonier, so I'll keep trying to improve.